She waved her hand to the right, and the two rows of Praetorians flew through the air and slammed into the wall. Concrete shattered, and dust floated upward. The Praetorians didn't even have time to grunt. They were dead or unconscious, and she didn't care which. She had become her father, and now the weak were in front of her.
Aurelius de Finita, Imperial Ascendant, looked to his left. His men lay there, broken and unmoving. "Alexandria," he whispered, "you've got to stop this."
On unsteady feet, the young woman walked toward her father, the man who had been capable of breaking her a month ago. He turned his head to look at her, and to his credit, he wasn't shaking. He also wasn't stupid, and he made no movements.
"Is this what you wanted, Father?" Alex asked. "You wanted your genes to always be in power." She stopped a half-meter from him. "Do your genes feel powerful now? Tell me."
His jaw flexed as anger rolled through him. Perhaps for the first time in his life, the Ascendant stood in front of something he couldn't control or bend to his will.
"I'm going to go find my brother now. I wonder if he's happy with this little experiment? I wonder if I'll know which one is him and which is the clone. Can you tell?"
He stared at her.
For a second, she thought that would be it. His arrogance ruled the day, though, as it had his entire life. His hand was fast, and it moved to strike her in the throat, but her mind was faster than either of their bodies could ever be. She blinked, and her father rose into the air and smashed into the ceiling. Lights shattered and glass fell to the ground, though none of it touched Alex.
She glared at him, her red eyes glowing in the new darkness. "The first Aurelius knew when he'd reached his limits, Father. You would have been wise to understand the same."
Alex walked forward and flung her father to the floor with as much force as she could muster.
She left the room then, silence the only sound behind her.
Chapter Eighteen
“These humans do not seem to care much about living.”
—Internal thought of Jeeves
The AllMother's eyes flashed open and she gasped for breath. All these years later, she didn't know where she was. She blinked, then in her peripheral vision, she watched the gigante lean forward. He was sitting next to her now, having switched places. His eyes were wide, and he stared at the AllMother with the closest thing to concern he could show.
"You okay?" he asked, his voice a raspy whisper everyone in the transport could easily hear.
The AllMother remembered now, as she had when she’d woken up in that capsule. She'd been dreaming, or maybe remembering was closer. "I'm okay. Thanks." She patted the giant's massive leg.
The AllMother ignored the creature's surprise and leaned her head back against the seat. She hadn't thought about those first actions for a long time, centuries, maybe. For a very brief time, she'd known how her father had done what he'd done. She could have acted the same, conquering an entire planet only to bend it to her will while saying she was doing it for the people.
She closed her eyes again, though she doubted she'd fall asleep. She was still tired, but just now, she wasn't interested in remembering the horrible things she'd done.
Alistair stared at his surroundings, taking them in very carefully. He had his SkinSuit on and the hood over his head, the eye mechanisms allowing him to see kilometers in front of him. Obs was at his feet, and Relm and Faitrin were on his right. Caesar and Servia stood on his left, and the AllMother was behind them.
The fortress was about ten kilometers away. Caesar had been right about the little card he held. The transport wasn't detected by anyone, and Caesar hadn't been able to explain why it hadn’t been, only that they were safe. Faitrin ended up explaining that the card allowed stealth transports to pick up assets. Technology shielded them from eyes searching for their whereabouts.
It didn't matter now.
Caesar said this is where the gigantes were—and Thoreaux.
Once again, Alistair found himself wondering what in the hell they were to do. “Fortress” might not be the right term. It'd taken them almost thirty-six hours to get to this place, and the planet's star was starting to recede beneath the horizon. That might make this a little easier, but not much. What Alistair was looking at surely had the technology to see in darkness.
The gangsters on this planet were like a government, and Alistair now stared at the capital. The actual governments on this planet had to be insanely powerful to hold these criminals at bay.
A tall tower stood in front of the building. Nothing but wilderness lay in all directions: no homes, no businesses, only that massive building. "What is that?" Alistair asked as he pointed at the tower.
"Laser defense system," Caesar answered.
"Can it shoot the transport?"
"Yes. Hiding does not work here," the giant answered calmly.
"That's great," Relm said. "Exactly what I wanted to hear."
"Okay." Alistair looked past the defense tower at the wall that wrapped around the building. Sentries walked the top of it. "Are those androids or people or gigantes?"
"Mixture," Caesar responded.
Alistair also saw turrets on top of the wall, most likely bearing plasma guns or lasers. Who knew what it would look like when they got in, but he couldn't concern himself with that at the moment. "Caesar, where are your kind kept? Do they roam free, or are they in a specific spot?"
"We are only called for certain tasks. Otherwise, we are kept beneath the ground."
Relm interjected, "This gets better and better."
Looking to the left and right of the building, Alistair saw the same defensive towers. He assumed there was one on the far side, too. "Caesar, this is your home. What do we do?"
"Like I said.
